I got a question about running tests that use Typemock Isolator outside
of Visual Studio, though, so I figured I'd post this article with some
additional info and clarifications.

First, the setup:

NCover 3.4.16

Typemock Isolator 6.0.6

MSTest with Visual Studio 2010

If you have different versions of these tools, you may need to tweak
things. Also, I'm building on a 64-bit machine, so you may see some
paths referring to 32-bit over 64-bit tools because MSTest is a 32-bit
runner so you need to use the 32-bit NCover to get coverage.

When you have Typemock
Isolator
installed, running tests through the built-in Visual Studio test runner
"just works" because Isolator installs a Visual Studio add-in helper. To
get coverage, you can use TestDriven.NET to
"Test With -> NCover" and it works great.

If you want to run coverage outside of Visual Studio, though, there are
a few things you might think to try, some of which work and some of
which don't.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY: You have to start things in a specific order.

Start Typemock so it can link with NCover.

Start NCover so it can run and profile your unit tests.

Start your unit test runner so NCover can gather statistics.

When the test runner ends, NCover automatically ends.

Make sure Typemock stops when everything is over, regardless of
whether the tests pass or fail.

If you don't start things in the right order, your tests won't work and
you won't get the expected results.

WHY IS THAT ORDER REQUIRED?

The way Isolator works, it's sort of a "pass-through profiler." NCover
is a profiler, too, which is how it takes coverage statistics. You can
only have one profiler running at one time. The cool "trick" Isolator
does is that it "links" with other profilers so calls pass through
Isolator first, your mocks get inserted, and then pass along to the
linked profiler like NCover. You can actually watch Typemock switch
registry entries around on the fly when you start and stop it - it'll
temporarily put itself into the registry where you'd expect to see
NCover, so if you "start NCover" you're actually starting Typemock,
which then chains in NCover.

However, if you try to start the other profiler like NCover first, the
linking doesn't happen so your mocks don't show up when you expect them.
Problems.

Given that, let's talk about ways to run Typemock Isolator and get
coverage when outside of Visual Studio.

BUILD SCRIPTS

Running things through a build script is the most common and
recommended way of doing things. It allows you to automate the whole
build process and use the same script on a developer machine and in a
continuous integration server.

The first thing we do is set up some helpful properties. This will
make creation of the various command lines and such a little easier. In
this case, it's mostly paths to tools.

Next we include the Typemock and NCover build tasks. That way we can
use those to run our tests.

The "All," "Clean," and "Compile" targets are standard fare.

The "All" target is our build script entry point. Run that target
and it does the full clean/build/test run.

The "Clean" target deletes all the binaries and log files so we can
get a nice clean build run.

The "Compile" target actually builds the assemblies. In this case, I
have two - a class library and the corresponding set of unit tests.

The "Test" target creates the folder where we'll dump our coverage
logs and then fires off the unit testing.

Now we get to the interesting bit: Showing the two ways you can run
tests with coverage.

The Test_BuildTasks target shows coverage using the provided build
tasks. This is the recommended way of doing things since the build
task interface makes your script a lot more readable and you get some
"compile time checking" in case you mistype one of the build script
attributes. Plus, in some cases the build script tasks make things a
little easier to specify than the longer, more cryptic command lines.
You'll notice that we're starting things and stopping them in the order
mentioned earlier. That's important, and it's why this works.

The Test_CommandLine target shows coverage using a command line
executable. Typemock Isolator comes with a program called
"TMockRunner.exe" which is a lot like NCover.Console.exe that comes with
NCover - it lets you start up a process that will have Typemock enabled
on it. If you dissect that big long command line, you'll see:

We lead with TMockRunner.exe, tell it we'll be running coverage
(-first) and link it to NCover (-link NCover3.0).

We run NCover.Console.exe with its usual command line options,
telling it where to put logs and which assembly to profile.

Finally we run MSTest.exe and tell it where our unit tests are.

In the command line version, we don't have to explicitly shut down
Typemock Isolator because it's only enabled for that one process, just
as NCover.Console.exe only enables NCover for the one process it starts.

COMMAND LINE EXECUTION

I showed you a command line in the build script example above, but you
don't have to use it inside a build script. It'll work just as well
outside the script environment. The only downside to using it alone is
that you won't be able to use the handy variables to make the command
line more readable the way you can in the build script, but if you make
a little batch file or something with the command line in it, that'll
work perfectly.

NCOVER EXPLORER

NCover Explorer offers a way to start an application and profile it from
right in the UI.

This won't work the way you think because NCover Explorer tries to
start NCover first. Remember the critical ordering, above, where
Typemock Isolator needs to be started first? That doesn't happen here.
NCover Explorer expects to start NCover straight away. So how do you get
it to work?

Start NCover Explorer using TMockRunner.exe and Typemock will be
enabled during your test runs. A sample command line is as follows:

When you run that, the console window where you started NCover Explorer
will stay open. Leave it. Now when you set up your project, set the
application to profile as MSTest.exe and set your "testcontainer" to
your unit test assembly:

And for NCover Path, make sure you point to the 32-bit version of
NCover.Console.exe because MSTest.exe is 32-bit:

Now when you click the "Run Coverage" button, things will work as
expected because TMockRunner.exe has enabled Typemock Isolator inside
NCover Explorer.

NUNIT GUI OR OTHER TEST RUNNER TOOLS

I know we're using MSTest in this example, but I figured a quick note
was in order:

If you're using, say, NUnit and want Typemock to work inside the NUnit
GUI, you need to do a similar trick as we did in NCover Explorer, above
- start NUnit GUI through TMockRunner.exe, just omit the "-first" and
"-link NCover3.0" command line options. This same trick holds for other
test runner tools - starting the tool through TMockRunner.exe should get
you the results you're looking for.